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Marx’s theory of rent as presented in the Third Volume of Capital has been a well-researched area in the history of political economy but not many of these studies discuss the theory with respect to the exposition of the labour theory of value and primitive accumulation in the FirstVolume. In this backdrop, the chapter attempts to retrace the trajectory of the theory of rent in Marx’s exposition of capitalism by focusing on the status of land as a ‘commodity without value’ (not produced by labour) within this framework. By critically engaging with the writings of David Harvey and Enrique Dussel, the chapter also explores the methodological innovation in the deployment of ‘rent’ within a value-based interpretation of the capitalist mode of production and the productive ambiguity in positing the distinction between rent and interest in a capitalist society, especially in terms of competition and return on ‘fictitious capital’. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019.

History

(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

"Capital" in the East: Reflections on Marx

Marx’s theory of rent: A ‘speculative’ reading

Global Governance and India's North-East: Logistics, Infrastructure and Society

Financialisation of infrastructure and the construction of a 'seamless Asia'

World University root node

Logistical hubs and the look east and act east policy: The case of Kolkata and its port

Logistical Asia: The Labour of Making a World Region

Spatialization of calculability, financialization of space: A study of the Kolkata Port

There have been quite a few significant studies on the relationship between political economy as a discipline and the modes of colonial governmentality in India, emphasising the contradictions that were perceived to exist between the universality of the discipline and the irreducible concreteness of local conditions. In this article, I shall try to argue that a nuanced study of these contradictions would require exploring the modalities of vernacularisation of the economic discipline in the colony. The central focus of this article will be at three Bengali textbooks of political economy, mostly inspired by the famous Irish educationist Richard Whately’s textbook for children. A close reading of these books will demonstrate how a modality of translation was operative in the second half of the nineteenth century where the equivalence between ‘illustrations’ from the original and translated texts produced curious displacements and defined the vernacular domain on the basis of an exchange-based sociality grounded in the notion of the family. © 2016, © 2016 SAGE Publications.

Fulltext

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Exchanging words and things: Vernacularisation of political economy in nineteenth-century Bengal

This chapter attempts to foreground the question of migrant labour and their survival in contemporary Kolkata with a study of workers in both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors of the solid waste management industry. In the age of ecological awareness and hygienic aesthetics, the image of a solitary woman/man sweeping the city streets in the early mornings, carrying the hazardous waste on her/his shoulders, clearing the overflowing litterbins with sharp dexterity produces a strong and darkly ironical visual effect. Apart from these heart-wrenching stories of exploitation and under-appreciation, there are other aspects of the waste disposal industry which deserve attention-especially the institutional details of their participation in the city workforce. In this chapter, the authors look at these issues by exploring work forms and life stories of conservancy workers who have migrated from different parts of the country and have been employed by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and of homeless rag-pickers who participate in the apparently non-official systems of waste management in the city. Closely looking at a group of ‘settled migrant’ rag-pickers, mostly women, this chapter seeks to understand the time, territory, family structures and the pattern of shifts in occupation taking place in and around a particular dwelling area. Put differently, it explores the relationship between the contingencies of occupation and the question of social reproduction, keeping the question of space alive in the context of a burgeoning rent economy in the city. © Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) 2017.

Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism

Life, labour, recycling: A study of waste management practices in contemporary Kolkata

This volume looks at how accumulation in postcolonial capitalism blurs the boundaries of space, institutions, forms, financial regimes, labour processes, and economic segments on one hand, and creates zones and corridors on the other. It draws our attention to the peculiar but structurally necessary coexistence of both primitive and virtual modes of accumulation in the postcolony. From these two major inquiries it develops a new understanding of postcolonial capitalism. The case studies in this volume discuss the production of urban spaces of capital extraction, institutionalization of postcolonial finance capital, gendering of work forms, establishment of new forms of labour, formation of and changes in caste and racial identities and networks, and securitization-and thereby confirm that no study of contemporary capitalism is complete without thoroughly addressing the postcolonial condition. By challenging the established dualities between citizenship-based civil society and welfare-based political society, exploring critically the question of colonial and postcolonial difference, and foregrounding the material processes of accumulation against the culturalism of postcolonial studies, this volume redefines postcolonial studies in South Asia and beyond. It is invaluable reading for students and scholars of South Asian studies, sociology, cultural and critical anthropology, critical and praxis studies, and political science. © Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) 2017.

Accumulation in post-colonial capitalism

The introduction makes three main points, which characterize this volume. (a) It looks at how accumulation under post-colonial capitalism tends to blur various geopolitical boundaries of space, institutions, forms, financial regimes, labour processes, and economic segments on the one hand and creates zones and corridors on the other. In this context, it draws our attention to the peculiar but structurally necessary coexistence of both primitive and virtual modes of accumulation in the postcolony. With increasing inflow of virtual capital in the form of offshore funds, venture business, hedge funds, Internet-based investment and banking, and forward trading, more people are forced to accept precarious work conditions in the unorganized sectors resulting in massive de-peasantization and creation of footloose labour, otherwise known as migrant or transit labour. (b) At the same time, family household becomes the new site of capitalist production and market system, which is different from what is assumed to be a site of non-capitalist production, something that is outside of capital. (c) The introduction also draws attention to what is now called affective labour that is to say labour actualized in the forms of care work and reproductive work. Affective labour leads to the conceptualization of affective value by focusing on the labouring body and subjectivity. Affective value is often mistaken to be essentially a cultural category, and not an economic category, in spite of its vulnerability to exploitation, thus becoming an element in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. These three aspects taken together reflect on one of the principal features postcolonial capitalism, namely the overwhelming existence of informal conditions of production. These new forms of accumulation result in new discursive and political terrains of struggle. The chapters of the volume reflect from different discursive, analytical, and conceptual perspectives on these new forms of accumulation and unique modes of struggle. © Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) 2017.